In the aircraft industry, elongate members, such as composite stringers, must be held in a desired position while being prepared for an adhesive bonding operation. During preparation for bonding, a film adhesive material is manually rolled out to the length of the stringer, which may be 90 feet or more, and a protective poly backer must then be removed from the film. The entire length of the film material is then flipped over by a team of workers in order to place the backside of the film adhesive on a base flange of the stringer. Workers then manually trim excess film material away from the edges of the base flange.
During the operations described above, the stringer may be hand held by several workers, while other workers roll out and apply the film adhesive to the stringer. The stringer may also be hand-held while workers trim away excess film adhesive. Hand holding and manipulation of the stringer may be tedious, time-consuming, labor intensive and may present the risk of damage to edges of the base flange.
Once the film application process is complete for one stringer, work may begin on another stringer. The process of transitioning work from one stringer to the next may be difficult and time consuming, particularly when heavy equipment is involved.
Accordingly, those skilled in the art continue with research and development efforts in the field of film material application.